


Stitch Me Up/Knock Me Down

by Anger_and_Apathy



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Aftercare, M/M, Pain, Pre-War, Unexpected Kink, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-09-30 09:33:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10160282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anger_and_Apathy/pseuds/Anger_and_Apathy
Summary: Steve hits Bucky like a sledge hammer. He usually does. It starts the first time Steve gives Bucky stitches, and ends somewhere down the road of war and wanting. A story about fighting and falling in love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> first attempt in a long time. Be gentle.

They’re 17 when it starts. Well, Bucky is 17. Steve is 16 and three months and always seems much older than that. It happens because they’re fighting. Not the usual kind of back-alley brawling, tumbling around in dirt and trash and watery twilight, kicking dust into the dying sky. But real, honest to god knock down, drag out-  
“Fuck! Steve, get behind me!” blood and bile and white teeth and “don’t you fucking argue with me I said- shit, Dammit Steve I said-” and then black. Then nothing.

Bucky comes round slumped over their worn wooden kitchen table, head throbbing with every beat of his heart. He groans, tries to push himself up, but there's a firm, warm hand on the back of his neck, and he slumps a little forward, grateful for the support of the table and the faint pressure at the back of his head, tasting blood. Steve’s voice comes from somewhere soft behind him. 

“Hey, hold still champ.” Bucky can hear the sound of the stove hissing in the background, the gurgle of water being warmed over gas and the slight snick of metal against metal as Steve moves from behind him over towards the boiler. There’s a knot already forming in the pit of his stomach and Steve seems to read the silence.

“You’re not going to like this,” he says, “One of them got you pretty good and we don’t got money for a surgeon. Hold still.”

Bucky tries. He really does. But then Steve is standing over him with a needle and string and his vision blacks out a bit at the sides and his head jerks back on impulse with a kind of growl in the back of his throat. Steve sits down. Places the suture kit on the table beside them. Bucky stares at it. 

They’ve had to do stitches before. Once when Steve fell off of the porch at his mother’s house. Once when Bucky held the knife the wrong way carving a wooden whistle for Steve’s 16th birthday, but never like this. Never at midnight at the kitchen table with shaking hands and shaking fingers and the taste of blood already at the back of his throat, the sick, sudden, hot shoots of pain lancing down his temple. The gurgle of protest that bubbles unexpectedly and shamefully through his open mouth saying 

“No,” and “can’t we just-” but Steve is shaking his head, looking soft and a little sad and murmuring, 

“Nah, Buck, it’s too deep trust me, come here.”

He does, moving over towards Steve as though he can’t help himself. He can’t. Steve has that look in his eyes that he does sometimes. Soft but unyielding. Bucky would follow him into hell for this look. Steve is standing again. One hand still on Bucky’s shoulder. 

“Here.” Then there’s something else on the table and Steve is pushing a cup into Bucky’s hands saying, “It’ll hurt less.”  


The liquor burns at the back of Bucky’s throat, makes his pounding head swim even more. Steve tips his head back. Drinks straight from the bottle. Bucky watches the way his throat works. Feels sick. Feels very far away. He drinks once. Twice. Then the cup is empty and Steve fills it again, and then again until Bucky’s vision is swimming with more than pain and his body is lovely and warm and aches all over. When Steve’s voice comes it’s rough around the edges.

“Ready?” he asks. Steady somehow.

Bucky sucks in a breath. 

“Fine,” he says, and his voice only shakes so badly, “just don’t fuck me up too bad, okay?”  


“Ladies love scars,” Steve murmurs, but he’s already picking up the needle and his eyes are sharp as he slides a hand beneath Bucky’s jaw, moving his face forward and into the low lighting. The first stab comes as a shock. Bucky bites his teeth around a whimper and Steve rolls his thumb back over his jaw, whispers something indistinguishable beneath his breath but doesn’t stop. The second is bright like summer sunlight. A burn that pierces through his skin and through his temple and back down to his clenching teeth. Bucky punches out a quick breath and Steve’s eyes find his. They are very close now. Steve’s breath steady and cool against his flushed face, hand still holding him firm in place. 

When Steve hits a nerve, Bucky sees stars. Not the crisp, white-pointed cut-outs that wave through the air or the yellow plaques balanced in too many window on their streets but cosmos. Fucking galaxies. His entire body goes ridged, heat coursing down into the souls of his shoes and into the ground. Steve pulls away says,

“Buck, you okay?” Says something else and then again and Bucky hears the worry in his voice without understanding what’s been said. 

Bucky lets out a panting breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

“Right” he says, and gets himself to stand, gets himself across the room on legs like he’s been running. Gets himself inside the bathroom and against the door with the water running before he takes himself in hand and strips once, twice, three times before spilling over into oblivion and gone.

He comes back to the sound of water dripping onto the tile and a hollow knock on the thin board of the door at his back. He has no idea how loud he’s been. No idea what Steve could have- must have- fuck it. He smacks his head once into the doorframe, the pain searing him back into some semblance of control and opens the door. They’ve seen each other naked plenty of times. Enough that Bucky doesn’t think too much about doing up his trousers or straightening out his shirt.  
Steve’s eyes skate up his body and then away

“I wanted to check you hadn’t fainted and shit.”

Bucky coughs

“I’m fine,” he says, “Just you know, a little light-headed.”  
Steve’s eyes swing up again, this time to his face, and Bucky squirms a little and looks away, sweeping a hand back through his hair. 

“Listen,” he says, “I was gonna shower so-” 

“Yeah,” Steve says, “yeah of course.” but he doesn’t move and for some reason Bucky’s gaze goes to his mouth, the split of bright blood cutting across his bottom lip and the bruise already blooming across his chin. He almost reaches out. Stops himself.  
Steve clears his throat. Breaks his gaze. 

“You’re okay, though?” he asks, voice low. “I didn’t, I didn’t hurt you or anything?” And Bucy’s whole body softens.

“Nah, Steve,” he says quietly, “You didn’t hurt me.”

“How did we get out of their anyways?” 

Steve is already turning away.

“Dragged you down the alley and carried you up the stares asshole,” he says, “Whatever work you’re doing to prepare for the war is paying off ‘cause man you weigh like a sack of bricks. Took like half a fuckin hour. Thank me in the morning.”  
Bucky blushes.

“What about the other guys?”

Steve has his back to him.

“I took care of it, he says bluntly. “Go shower. Save me some hot water.”


	2. Chapter 2

The second time, they’re sparring in the alley beside their apartment. Steve had lost another fight that week, and Bucky had lost two and maybe a half but who’s counting anyways? It happens because they’re sparring, and because Steve knows his tricks by now and comes up beneath his guard when he isn’t looking and punches him square in the jaw and Bucky sees lights in his eyes and his heart races like he’s been running.

“Get me again,” he says, “you almost missed that time.” 

Steve smirks. He does. Bucky breaths into it. He can’t help it. Steve is watching him slightly. Silent in the still heat of the summer night, split knuckles and parted lips, head cocked to ask a question. 

“Good,” Bucky tells him, “You’re getting there. The rate you’re going you might not die after I’m deployed.” 

Steve spits into the dust,

“Who says I’m hellbent on living?” he says, “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be focused on?”

Bucky grins, 

“Come back with your sword or on it,” he croons, “What the fuck’re you looking at? We ain’t dancing here, Rodgers, c’mon. “Try it again.”

Steve inhales, 

“Harder? He asks, and Bucky rolls his eyes. 

“Try me,” he says, “Watch the stitches.”

It’s after, when they’re sitting on the porch outside their apartment with the sun setting behind them and Steve leaning against the railing when Bucky gives in.

“Sex,” he says and Steve answers immediately.  
“I’m waiting for marriage,” Bucky snorts.

“Shit,” he says, “You ain’t religious.”

Steve’s eyes roll.

“No,” he says, bottle gleaming as it’s tipped back, “But death will take my holy covenant long before marriage ever does, so it’s a fairly safe bet I’ll die untouched by sin.”

“You’re drunk.”

“You like getting hit.” Bucky freezes. Steve presses on. “Tell me,” he says, leaning back against the railing in a way that makes Bucky’s breath hitch and his hands itch to pull him back, “Is it just me or is it a kind of universal thing?”

“I don’t-” Bucky starts, and Steve sighs and rolls the bottle between his palms. Light catches the glass. 

“So what?” he says, “Is it the practice or the pain? You gearing up to take it like a man once the other side gets at you, or are you just wired wrong?”

“Shit,” Bucky tells him, “I ain’t taking nothing.” his head swims. He drinks, “thought we were talking about sex.”

Steve looks at him from between lowered lashes, 

“Aren’t we?”

Bucky snorts,

“You’re crazy,” he says. Steve shrugs.

“And you’re a damn fool,” he answers, “doesn’t make the question any less relevant. Practice or pain?”

Bucky swallows.

“Practice.” he lies, and Steve’s mouth quirks the way it does sometimes. 

“Whatever you say, soldier.”

Bucky licks his lips. 

“Sargent.”

Steve smiles at him, 

“At ease either way,” he says, soft, “I ain’t trying to catch you out on anything, darlin’. Practice or pain it’s all the same to me.”

“You said I was wired wrong.”

Steve laughs,

“Course you are. This don’t make no difference, that’s all.”

“Ready to go again?”

“Born it.”

They go once more. Steve loses once. Bucky three times. He can feel bruises blossoming by the time they stop. Steve exhales long and slow. Opens another beer. He passes it wordlessly to Bucky, gets up and wipes a trail of blood away from his mouth and says, 

“Man, they’re gonna get you good over there.”

Bucky just stares at him, glass cold against his face, lips on fire.

“So marriage,” he says hoarsely, and Steve laughs like he never has before.

“The proverbial knot.”

Steve’s got his eyes on him, so Bucky ducks his chin towards his chest, takes a pull from the bottle.

“What,” he says, “you waitin’ for someone special or something?”

There’s a silence between them, and when he looks up Steve is staring at him like he’s some kind of moron.

“People don’t wait until marriage because they’re in love Buck. They wait until marriage ‘cause they’re afraid of going to hell.”

Bucky can’t help it, he laughs, head thrown back against the slowly spreading stars. Steve isn’t smiling. Bucky wants to push him. Just a little.  


“Yeah, Stevie,” he says, knocking their shoulders together. “Who’s got you afraid of sinning?”

Steve pushes him away.

“You mostly,” he says, “go to sleep.”

Bucky stands, legs still shaking, 

“Are you-” he starts, but Steve is shaking his head.

“I’ve got one more fight tonight,” he says, “Don’t wait up.”


	3. Chapter 3

They lose their next fight two nights later. This time they’re together and this time it’s Bucky pulling Steve up from the ground and away from the men and down the nearest alley, swearing into his shoulder as Steve laughs at the stars.

“You’re crazy,” he tells him, and Steve laughs some more, says,

“Fuck, I love it when they swing like that,” and then coughs his way into quiet. Bucky watches him. 

“We should let up,” he says, “If it’s making you-”

“It ain’t making me anything,” Steve tells him, “leave me nothing.”

Bucky does. The night is cold against his burning face. Bright like the jump of his pulse in his chest and the alcohol in his veins, and he’s too burnt out to argue so he just tips his head back against the brick of the alleyway and lets the silence fade in between them. Only then does he notice that they’re not alone.  


There are two other figures in the street, two people standing close together several yards away. One of them is standing. The other is kneeling on the ground before him and Bucky gets a little twist in his chest and looks away, face flaming. Steve is watching the pair litigiously, and Bucky shoves at his shoulder and christ Steve and then they’re up and moving again, away from the scene and the sounds and back towards the street.

“I can’t believe you,” he says, when they’re out of earshot, “we almost stayed there, I just, I can’t. I need a minute.”

Steve is looking at him. 

“Is that what you want, Buck?” he asks, “Me on my knees in front of you?”

Bucky shoves him off, 

“Yeah right,” he says, a little thick, “right, my dick anywhere your teeth. Dream come true.”

Steve turns his head.

“No?” he says, “How about the other way then?”

Bucky’s face goes numb. 

“What?” he says. Steve’s smile quirks. 

“So that’s it, then?” he says, ignoring the gas-lights spilling out over the darkened asphalt and the shapes still moving through it. The street is mostly empty, but there are still enough people scattered on the shadowed side-walk that someone could hear.

“Someone might hear,” Bucky tells him, blood burning at the idea. 

Steve looks over at him again, voice pitched low beneath the stars.

“What?” he says, “You afraid someone’s going to hear you say it?”

“Christ, Stevie.”

“Say it.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Say it.”

Bucky coughs, mumbles, 

“I wanna suck your dick.”  


“Good.” Steve says, voice low. When Bucky looks again he looks a little sad. Looks away. They turn the corner towards their apartment. Bucky turns right. Steve stops in the middle of the sidewalk. 

“Where are you going?”

Bucky waves a bleary hand.

“Home,” he says. He takes another step. Steve doesn’t follow. 

Bucky frowns. His mouth tastes funny. Steve is looking at him again. Looking at him like he does sometimes, corner of his mouth turned up at the edges, hair in his eyes and hands in his pockets. 

“What?” he says.

Bucky doesn’t say it’s late. Doesn’t say you’re wasted. Doesn’t say It’s Tuesday or I love you.  


“Okay,” he says, “I’ll try to wait up.”

Steve smiles, 

“You always say that,” he tells him. 

Bucky watches him walk away.

“I always mean it,” he tells the sky.

Bucky isn’t sure he’s awake when Steve comes in, but he comes too quick enough to the sound of Steve tripping over the trash can by the door. Bucky’s drunk, still drunk, enough that he almost nods back off, but then Steve knocks into the low table in the living room and curses and Bucky remembers falling asleep on the couch initially waiting for him, so he pushes himself up and over to the slurred sound of Steve’s stilted breathing. 

The lights are low outside the half-open window, blinds pulled lazily across the mid-august heat, and Bucky can see Steve a little, silhouetted against the city skyline. It takes Bucky a moment to recognize the blood dripping from his hand. He’s drunk, okay, he’s drunk so it takes him a second, but then he’s on his feet and swaying unsteadily around the coffee table, grabbing out at Steve’s arms and pulling them both around to get Steve’s fingers up and under the moonlight. He hears himself start, 

“Steve-”

But Steve is looking up at him, tired maybe and a little confused. 

“It’s okay,” he says, “It isn’t mine.” Blood drips onto the carpet. Bucky doesn’t know what to say. Steve yawns, looks down. 

“Shit,” he says, “I’ll clean that up tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bucky tells him.


	4. Chapter 4

The third time isn’t physical. Bucky feels it anyways. Deep in his chest like someone shot him. He walks into it. Walks in on Steve pinning a black-haired soldier to the thin mattress of his narrow bed. Steve’s got one hand braced on the man’s shoulder, another at his hip and Bucky’s mouth goes dry and his body kind of hot and tight all over because Steve isn’t holding this man down. He’s working slowly into him, fucking slowly into him with this weird, serious look in his eyes. The soldier is whining and moving beneath him and making strange, keening noises at the back of his throat like he’s hurt or in heaven and Steve’s got that look on his face, almost like they’re lost in pain or concentration. 

They’re moving faster now, bedrails rattling against the walls and Bucky tries desperately to do something other than stare. In the end it’s Steve who sees him first. Steve who looks up real sudden with a hitch to his breath and suddenly stops moving. The soldier stops too, turning round to follow Steve’s gaze. He swears when he sees Bucky, surges up from the bed and towards the still-open door. Bucky stares at the spot on the bed where he used to be. 

He goes outside. He breathes. Steve is chain-smoking on the balcony. Bucky watches the city lights spill over his face.

“How long have you got?”

Steve takes a drag. Smoke spills passed his lips

“Bout a year.”

“You should have told me.”

Steve shrugs, 

“Ain’t nothing you can do about it,” he says.

“Nothing I can do about it?” Bucky says, and it comes out too loud in the late-night darkness, louder than he’d meant it to. But why shouldn’t he be loud and why is it that Steve is so so still. “Is it your liver? Cause there were those treatments we read about a few weeks ago. I know we decided it was too far but John’s got a car and I can take weekends off till-”

“It isn’t my liver.”

“Your lunges, then? ‘Cause I can quit smoking, fuck, Steve, we have to quit smoking.” There’s something slick sliding down his face and Steve is looking at him, soft this time. 

“It ain’t my lungs, Buck.”

“Then it’s-”

Steve does something then that Bucky doesn’t think he'll ever be ready for, not even if he lives to see the next century. He reaches out wordless and takes Bucky’s hand in his own and places it, palm flat, against the center of his chest, holds their hands together for one, two, three long beats of his heart and then another and another until Bucky blinks and loses count. 

When he can speak, Bucky says, 

“I got my marching orders today.”

Steve smiles. Slow. 

“How long you got?”

“Three days.”

“Jesus,” Steve tells him, “We’ll have to make the most of it.”


	5. Chapter 5

Bucky has it bad for Captain America. It doesn’t take the other’s long to catch on, really, not when they’re all sharing the same dust and blood and pain as each other. When Gabe finds out he forces Bucky back into the corner of their barracks with the same look on his face that he gets when killing krauts. He bends Bucky across his bunk and fucks the living hell out of him. Bucky gets a hand twisted in the sheet. Another braced against the wall and gives as good as he gets.

After, when they’re both lying back against the wall, legs brushing lightly beneath the blankets, Gabe fingers the edge of the drawing Steve had sent im in his last care package.

“So,” he says, after a beat, “Captain America.”

Bucky takes a soft drag of his cigarette.

“Star spangled man with a plan.”

Gabe chuckles. 

“Didn’t think you were particularly patriotic, Sergeant. Didn’t think you believed in much of if I’m honest but,” he smoothes a thumb lightly over the smudged paper, “guess the world is full of surprises.”

There’s something about his voice, something soft and somehow reverent that makes Bucky frown and take the picture from him.

“It’s not like that,” he says, “my- someone sent it to me. That’s all.”

Gabe’s eyes get soft, and he reaches out to trace a finger around Bucky’s lips.

“You got a girl back home,” he asks, “someone waiting for you?”

Bucky swallows.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I got someone waiting for me back home.”

Gabe hums soft at the back of his throat, fingers dipping lower to trace a line down Bucky’s throat.

“She know about you, Barnes,” he asks, “She know what you like?”

Bucky feels his breath catch.

“Yeah,” he says, and it comes out a rasp. Gabe huffs out a laugh, fingers skating over Bucky’s pulse point. Bucky feels his heartbeat against his hand, “yeah,” he says, “she- he knows about me.”

Gabe’s eyes go soft again. 

“You gotta be careful about that, Sarge,” he says, “we both know what it’s like to live a life worth dying for. Least yours can be hidden beneath your skin.”


	6. Chapter 6

The first time Bucky sees Steve post-serum he almost has a heart-attack. Or he would if he wasn’t sure he’d had one already during weeks of tortured, unyeilding pain. And Christ, “I thought you were Dead.” and “I thought you were smaller,” and then the bridge and burning and “Not without you!” 

He blacks out on the way back to camp. Can’t help himself. Comes too under rain on his face and the sky stretched open above him like a blessing, jostled against Steve’s side with one arm draped around his shoulders.  
Then there are people and lights and voices saying,  
“Captain, are you sure,” and “we can call a medic.” and Bucky scrapes his eyes open long enough to see Steve *Steve* standing a head taller than any of them.

They’re all looking at him. Deferring to him, and Steve smiles the way he does when he’s going to be heard and says soft like symphonies, 

“I’ll do this one myself.”

This time Steve is gentle. So, so gentle that Bucky aches for better nights and better days and something more. More, he wants to say, but he’s been tortured for days and can’t bear to think of the look on Steve’s face if he asks him for this, now.

This time they have anesthetic and clear lighting and the gash on his cheek is small and the first stitch pulls in like it's nothing, and Bucky is cold and numb and burning beneath the thin slice of stinging pain. Still, it’s enough to send a shiver down his spine and for the first deep breath he’s taken in months. It’s enough.

Steve is watching him. Slow. Careful. Bucky clears his throat like he hasn’t been screaming. Hasn’t been shouting and moaning and *Not without you* and scrapes out,

“Guess you don’t gotta go picking many fights these days.”

Steve starts the second stitch, 

“Nah,” he says, “Trouble’s gotten good at finding me,” and Bucky laughs and hisses and falls quickly quiet. Bites his lip and back the moan threatening to break free from the bile in his throat. Steve gets a hand at the back of his head says, 

“We can stop,” and “If you’re-” and Bucky kisses him like he’s been drowning and Steve a shipwreck because jesus he never thought he would see him again. Steve puts a hand on his chest. Not pushing. Not pulling. Just held there between them like all of the things they’ve left unsaid. So many years of silence. After a while, Bucky pulls away. Back into his own space and the thick fog of his aching head and says,

“Do me again.”

And Steve laughs and shakes his head and,

“Easy soldier.”

The anesthetics are starting to wear off, or maybe they never wore in quite like they should because the third stitch pierces something much deeper than Bucky’s skin. He feels it in his heart, in his lungs, right down to the souls of his feet. The very core of his being. He’s silent a brief moment, waiting for the thrum of it to fade out before he says what he’s been thinking since he first saw Steve post-serum.

“Guess you ain’t going to die then, either.”

Steve laughs, quiet.

“Guess I ain’t.”

“Think you’ll really get a chance to punch old Adolf in the face?”

Steve snorts, says,

“Well I’m gonna fucking try,” and Bucky punches weakly at his shoulder.

“You asshole,” he mumbles, “you fucking asshole. Why couldn’t you *tell* me. Know how many nights I worried sick that- when I didn’t hear from you how many times I thought you’d-” but it’s late and he isn’t having this conversation, not really, so he just says, “You don’t get to fucking die alone, you hear me? Not without me.”

And Steve laughs bright and true and the first time- the first *real* time since he fucking enlisted and says, “I’m not leaving without you either, Buck. End of the line, remember?" 

Bucky’s head swims.

“Good,” he says, “Take me to bed.”

“Alright,” says Steve. He does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment to keep me going y'all


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky’s legs are cramped and cold, so Steve carries him to the back of the barrack and the bed that’s much too small for the both of them and settles him down like a careful thing. It’s hard for Bucky to imagine this- any of this happening before, but they’ve both been to war and back and there’s something gentle about Steve’s hands that speaks to days and weeks and months of pain and Bucky’s tired and his body aches all over and it’s hard to feel patronized, not when Steve is looking at him like that, so soft and severe with his hands trailing over Bucky’s arms and chest as he smooths the blankets over him. His eyes rest on Bucky’s for a long moment before he rises, and there’s something hungry and something haunted about the way he says,

“I’ll let you sleep.”

Steve turns, but Bucky catches his wrist and pulls him down. 

The kiss is a slow, simple thing. This time Steve kisses back, easing into the warmth of Bucky’s mouth like he’s afraid of hurting something, and Bucky thinks for a moment that Steve might not yet know his own strength, and he pulls away long enough to study the face in front of him and feels a sudden, distant ache for gaunter cheeks and older days, asks, 

“When’d they hit you with all of this exactly?”

Steve shifts. Settles himself down so that he’s sitting at the edge of Bucky’s bed, legs drawn up with his forearms braced against his knees. 

“Right after boot camp.,” he says, “They had another candidate picked out but then I jumped on top of a grenade so, you know, that evened the odds.”

Bucky stares at him, 

“You jumped on top of a *grenade*?!”

Steve smiles.

“Course I did,” he says, “You know I go crazy when you’re gone.”

Bucky gapes,

“You said I was takin all the stupid with me.”

Steve laughs.

“Guess you missed some,” he says.

They’re silent for a second, then Bucky asks, 

“Do you miss it- being, you know, being different.”

And Steve says,

“Every damn day.”

Bucky doesn’t know how to reply. 

Finally he says,

“Stay.”

Steve looks at him like he’s a damn fool.

“I ain’t fucking you like this,” he says, point blank, and Bucky shivers. 

“But you’ll fuck me someday?”

Steve holds his gaze, 

“I’m thinking about it.”

Bucky’s head spins more than he’d care to let on, and his hand tightens against Steve’s wrist.

“I ain’t asking for that,” he says, “Not tonight. Just. stay, would you? I don’t. I don’t wanna sleep alone. Not after- just. I don’t want to.”

Steve’s eyes soften.

“It was bad,” he says, “behind the line.”

Bucky swallows.

“It was bad.”

“How bad?” Steve asks, and Bucky sighs.

“They got at me during the days,” he says bluntly, “but the nights were worse. Couldn’t tell which was which really, not in that fucking facility, but the waiting hurt more than whatever they did to me. Not knowing if I’d ever be free from it. If we’d ever- well.”

“If we’d ever see each other again?”

Bucky’s chest is tight.

“I dreamed of you,” he confesses, “nights I slept, when I slept, I dreamed of you. I never knew I’d get to see you. I-”

“I would have come,” Steve tells him, “serum or not, I would have come for you. I’m always gonna come for you.”

“Then stay.” 

Steve licks his lips, 

“Okay,” he says.

The bed isn’t big enough for both of them, so Steve settles himself against the wall, rocks Bucky back against his chest and wraps strong arms around him, slotting their legs together. Bucky leans into the unfamiliar strength of the embrace. Steve never held him like this, before, and something catches at the back of his throat, a yearning for lost moments and hazy memories of wanting. Steve’s breath is hot against his cheek and Bucky’s head pounds and his body aches for something he can’t explain. 

Finally he gets himself to speak, 

“Why didn’t we do this before?”

Steve shifts, 

“There was a war on,” he says.

Bucky feels his heartbeat in his back.

“And now?”

Steve is quiet. Then he says.

“Now it doesn’t matter.”


	8. Chapter 8

Moving hurts. Getting up hurts. Steve braces a hand beneath Bucky’s shoulder and eases him up from the bed. Gentle. Slow. 

“So,” Steve says, “How’s the team gonna react once they know you spent last night in bed with Captain America?”

Steve says the title like a punchline. Bucky doesn’t look at him, 

“Not too surprised,” he says, “They already know what I’m like.”

Steve laughs,

“Oh yeah?” he says, “How’d they know?”

Bucky shifts, 

“Gabe caught me with it.”

“With what?”

“That drawing you- the fucking self portrait you sent me.”

“Caught you-” Steve begins, and then his voice forms a delicate ‘o’.

Bucky snarls.

“Shut up,” he says.

“Christ,” Steve says, undeterred, “That must have been a sight. You all swelled up with patriotic glory. What’d you think when you looked at it? You think it looked like me?”

“Yeah,” Bucky tells him, “I thought it looked like you. 

Steve waits a beat,

“So,” he says, “Gabe.”

“What?”

“You and he-”

“We’re friends, Steve.”

“I see.”

Bucky shifts.

“You made any friends since we-”

And Steve laughs.

“There’s this dame,” he starts, then laughs again, “christ she’d kill me to hear it that way. Here’s this woman, this army SSR named Peggy Carter. Me and her are gonna go dancing soon as this things over.”

“You’re really gonna?” 

“I’m gonna try.”

Bucky studies him for a minute. 

“Well shit, Captain, he says, “I’ll follow you anywhere, even onto a dancefloor.

Steve smirks. 

“It’s a deal.”


	9. Chapter 9

The walk back is the longest of his life, and Bucky is tired and sore when they finally make it back to the camp, trailed by the rest of the escaped prisoners. There’s shouting and revelry and a girl who looks at Steve like she’s expecting something else.

“You’re late,” she tells him, and Steve pulls the mangled radio from his pack and says as cool as you please, 

“I couldn’t call my ride.” 

The woman smiles. It’s a subtle thing.

Bucky’s eyes flick up and over her face, over Steve’s smile and the shine in his eyes, shouts,   
“Hey! Let’s hear it for Captain America,” and the group erupts in cheers. 

In the end, Steve’s missed two performances and a metal of valor. He doesn’t seem to mind. The commandos hold a vigil that night. Nothing fancy, just a fire and a flask passed around in somber silence. The alcohol burns at Bucky’s throat and he thinks of fallen friends and broken bodies. Steve stands stoic at his side, tall and strong and all together too solid than he should be. Gabe casts a few looks their way, and Bucky holds his gaze, remembers sweat and slick skin and “Captain America?” and doesn’t know how to explain. 

Steve ducks out early for a meeting, and comes back talking of strategy and victories and wars yet unwon. Then there’s a bar and more booze and the same woman dressed in red. Peggy, he thinks. Though Steve calls her Agent Carter. More booze. More bodies. More talk of dancing.

Then at last, at long last, long after the lamps have been extinguished and the laughter has died out, there’s a bed and a bottle and a somehow empty barrak.

“The other’s are sleeping outside,” Steve says, though Bucky hasn’t asked.

Then Steve’s got his hand on his throat, not pressing, just holding, fingers cupped unyeilding beneath the pulse-point. Bucky thinks of bruising. Steves voice is husky when he speaks, pitched low beneath the black of the barracks and the thick press of night. Bucky sees the shadows of his eyes. 

“What’d you want, Barnes?” and Bucky thinks bight me, choke me, love me fuck me and says, 

“You,” and Steve lets out this sound that’s almost a growl and hoists him off the ground with uncanny ease. Bucky gets his legs wrapped around Steve’s waist and then Steve is kissing him, *really* kissing him, hot tongue and hard angles and Bucky gets his hands twisted in the front of his shirt and lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

They’re at the bed now, and Steve moves away from Bucky’s mouth, down the line of his throat, biting sharp against his shoulder. Bucky moans something he can’t be sure of and presses into it, the curve of flexing fingers and the rush in his temples. Steve’s other hand in his hair now pulling just this side of too much and not enough at all and Bucky loses himself for just a moment, hips grinding down and vision blacking out. 

He comes to and Steve is speaking against his skin, ragged around the edges and Bucky’s breath hitches and he stills just so, just as Steve’s palm presses down against his throat. 

“I used to do this, you know,” Steve says, “for the boys back home, ‘fore they got shipped overseas. ‘Bout the only thing I could do for them, besides taking their place. Christ I wanted to take their place.” 

Bucky’s laugh cuts off beneath Steve’s hand, 

“Fuck,” he rasps, “You’re still shit at small talk.”

Steve drags a hand through Bucky’s hair, 

“Used to wonder how many of them died right afterwards. How many times I was the last one to touch them. Men about to die, they’re different than those who’re gonna keep on living. They want more. Need more. You need more, don’t you?”

“I need you.”

Steve’s eyes grow shadowed. 

“Not all of me, Buck,” he says, “Not all of me.” Steve is quiet for a beat, then he says, “I never killed a man before I came and rescued you.”

Bucky nods against the pressure of Steve’s hand. 

“I killed a lot of men before you found me.”

Steve works his way back to Bucky’s mouth, bites hard. Copper. 

“Blood that won’t come off.”

“You’re holding back on me.”

Steve gives a sort of smile.

“I’m always holding back on you, baby,” he says, “you know that.”


End file.
